He was soon to join the Inverurie Loco Works FC where he established himself as an accomplished full-back before attracting the interest of English First Division club Preston North End.
[3] In spite of spending part of his military service abroad Beattie was also to gain a further five unofficial caps for Scotland during wartime internationals and appear as a 'guest' player for several clubs.
After the war, and with his playing days now behind him, Beattie accepted the position of secretary-manager with Barrow, then a mid-table club in the old English regional Third Division North, after leaving Preston in March 1947.
Finally a third club record gate was achieved on Good Friday when 11,644 watched a 1–1 draw with Wrexham, their biggest ever crowd for a home league fixture.
By the end of March 1949 he at last left the troubled Bluebirds to join Stockport County, also a Third Division North club, whom he transformed from a mid-table side into promotion challengers in late 1951–52.
Huddersfield were relegated to Division Two for the first time in their history but Beattie, then one of the youngest managers in the Football League, and who had now nailed two lucky horseshoes to his office wall, was already planning ahead.
Full-back Ron Staniforth and utility player Tommy Cavanagh followed him across the Pennines from Stockport County, whilst inside forward Jimmy Watson came down from Motherwell to pep up the attack.
At this point Town appointed Bill Shankly to assist Beattie, the two men having been former teammates at Preston North End years earlier, but relegation was again around the corner.
Huddersfield struggled in vain to avoid the drop, in a season that saw the emergence of future England full-back Ray Wilson, and they succumbed to the inevitable ironically with Sheffield United, the side with whom they had been promoted three years before.
In the middle of the 1954 World Cup held in Switzerland, Scotland's first entry into the competition, he resigned after claiming his four-game stint with a squad of 13 players placed him in an impossible situation.